LuminWave's independent research and development of pure solid-state LiDAR silicon photonic phased array chip won the "2020 most promising IC Design Enterprise" award.
On November 3, 2020, the Core China Core Leadership Summit and Award Ceremony was held in Shenzhen. As the most influential annual event in the semiconductor industry, 400,000 electronic engineers and industry experts participated in the evaluation. LuminWave's independent research and development of pure solid-state LiDAR silicon photonic phased array chip LW-OPA-600A won the "2020 Most promising IC Design Enterprise" award.
It is understood that the self-developed LW-OPA-600A chip is a pure solid-state LiDAR chip based on CMOS silicon photonic phased array technology, which can provide LiDAR products with laser scanning capability of up to 600 lines and high quality far-field light beam. Different models can work in the near-infrared to short-wave infrared (900-1550nm) and other different bands. The chip is the first chip product based on silicon photonic phased array technology released in China, which has huge advantages in size, performance, cost, reliability and other aspects. Currently, the OPA chip has been applied to LuminWave's pure solid-state LiDAR products, providing high resolution, large field of view, high reliability, and low cost image-level 3D sensing solutions for autonomous driving, consumer electronics and other market applications.
The LW-SDL-200 series, which was unveiled at CIOE in September, is a pure solid-state image-grade LiDAR based on this chip. The market price of this line of pure solid-state LiDAR products is in the $100 range. From the perspective of the development trend of LiDAR, we can see that LiDAR 1.0 era is a mechanical LiDAR completely dependent on macro rotating components, LiDAR 2.0 era is a mixed solid-state LiDAR of "chip + micro device", and LiDAR 3.0 era is a pure solid-state solution without any movable components. The birth of LW-SDL-200 series products marks the arrival of the pure solid state LiDAR era, and the pure solid state LiDAR scheme is widely regarded as the ultimate scheme to achieve vehicle gauge level LiDAR in the industry.
In addition to its applications in autonomous driving, the company's LiDAR products also have notable applications in consumer electronics. In particular, after Apple installed LiDAR sensors on several flagship products this year, the technical concept of LiDAR has begun to be gradually understood by the public, and LiDAR will be more widely used in the field of consumer electronics in the next year.
Earlier this year, LuminWave announced the LW-FS8864-SMx series of MicroLiDAR sensor modules for the autonomous driving and consumer electronics markets. It is reported that this series of products are currently in the batch shipment stage. This series of products not only integrates millimeter-level optical chip, microprocessor (MCU) and power management unit (PMU), but also makes calibration compensation algorithm and distance adaptive algorithm. At the same time, according to the diversified autonomous driving and consumer electronics market demand for 3D perception, a variety of deep learn-based AI algorithms can be embedded in the sensor module to provide solutions for autonomous driving blind repair, robot obstacle avoidance, SLAM, gesture and posture recognition and other industry applications.
LuminWave's small-array MicroLiDAR sensor module LW-FS8864-SMx provides more accurate multipoint depth information up to 64 pixels (8x8) compared to ultrasonic and single-point radar modules at comparable price points. 3D environment awareness data can be directly provided to the algorithm within a range of 5 meters. The optical design of this series of products meets the safety standards of the human eye, and at the same time has the characteristics of high signal-to-noise ratio and strong anti-light ability, which can maintain very good performance in outdoor environment. MicroLiDAR series products have been widely concerned by the market since their release, and have been widely used in intelligent terminal, intelligent home, intelligent security, intelligent lighting, robotics, AGV/AMR, automatic driving and other fields.
LW-FS8864-SMx Gesture Control solution
Through the embedded gesture recognition AI algorithm, it can judge several basic conventional gestures including up and down, left and right, front and back, clockwise and counterclockwise, and make corresponding intelligent control according to the judgment of gestures. It can be applied to smart TV, smart speaker and other terminals to control volume, page switching and other non-contact operations. In the realm of smart lighting, things like turning lights on/off, adjusting brightness and color can be done with simple gestures.
LW-FS8864-SMx attitude recognition solution
Through 64 pixels (8x8) of 3D depth data information, the deep learning-based AI algorithm can quickly identify the movement and posture of the target and trigger intelligent linkage. It can be used for the correction of incorrect sitting posture, the warning of falling in confined space, the warning of driver fatigue state and other scenes, while taking into account the acquisition of depth data, image recognition and privacy protection.
LW-FS8864-SMx close-range obstacle avoidance solution
Compared with products based on ultrasonic wave and single point radar module of the same price, the multi-point small-area array scheme can provide more accurate depth information, and can directly provide 3D environment perception data for the algorithm within the range of 5 meters, which is widely used in the robot /AGV/AMR close-range obstacle avoidance scenes.
Guided by market demand and driven by technological innovation, LuminWave has developed a series of products for different market needs, including pure solid-state imaging LiDAR and MicroLiDAR, by utilizing the technical advantages of silicon photonic phased array chip, continuous wave frequency modulation chip technology and wafer level micro and nano optics. The realization of a miniaturized, low-cost LiDAR product matrix continues to deliver more valuable, intelligent, scalable, and cost-effective lidar products to the market.
